Update: I Play to Level, Not to Raid

I haven’t spoken with the GM yet myself, but I did sit in and watch the chat log as my wife talked to him which gave me a somewhat clearer understanding of the overall situation.

When she started talking to him he immediately went defensive, which is pretty understandable since he had no idea it was coming and she caught him just as he logged in. But, defending yourself in a defensive way is counter productive to solving problems; go figure. For about the first 3/4 of the discussion he stayed defensive and deflected all the questions, giving no answers at all and focusing on minute little details rather than the issue. At that point I was about ready to tell him right where he could shove his attitude, and knowing my wife as I do, had he been there in person there would have been large, dense object flying at his face (been there, felt that).

Eventually though he stopped dodging the issue and got down to explanation. Some of it I disagree with still, but those are his calls to make as the GM. The root of the problem is/was communication. The two slots that were open (heals/dps) that my wife and I could have easily filled since we were both right there were given to other people for reasons that were never communicated. The dps had been at the scheduled raid (ICC) but had to log off for a while due to personal issues, and he required a summon the new raid because he had logged out in the original location. The GM had saved his spot for him because of that, but had not mentioned it because of the personal nature of the player’s situation. The healer’s spot, which went to the healer who logged in late, had been saved for them because they were looking up strategies on the new boss per the GM’s request instead of logging in and showing up early.

None of that was communicated to anyone, and none of us were aware of it. The reason why is because communication of those issues took place outside of the game. I’m not in the habit of keeping personal contact information for my GM in a casual raiding guild, but maybe that’s just me. Maybe the people involved are long time friends or something, so they have that sort of relationship; I don’t know, couldn’t tell you.

The other dps slot that was filled with the guy who was whispering me, that either of us could have filled, was given to him because of yet another reason that was never communicated. It’s apparently an unwritten rule that couples raid together or get turned away together. They don’t want to cause any issues by letting only one of the people in, thus causing marital issues as they say it has in the past. It’s a fair enough guideline to have in place, but there is an “Opt Out” option in that right? We let him know as soon as that came up that we don’t care if only one of us gets to go, as we’re both strong altoholics and neither one of us cares if only one is able to raid that night.

That rule explained why I wasn’t invited to the raids I missed as well. Since my wife hadn’t been invited they turned me away as well.

After the conversation was over my wife turned off the game, cried out some of her frustration and disappointment, and then spent the rest of the night watching tv. They have invited her to a couple of raids since then, but she’s turned them down for other commitments or because she just wasn’t up for raiding at the time. My wife did join in a raid over the weekend, but her computer had some serious lag issues that I’m pretty sure are hardware related yet have no idea how to fix, so she asked to be replaced by someone who could actually see their screen get updated more than once every 2-4 seconds.

They invited me to a raid on the night of the discussion as well, planning to down just a single boss, so I went ahead and joined them in that, but otherwise turned down the invites over the weekend as well.

It’s hard after having a discussion like that, to accept an invite to participate without thinking that they’re inviting you now simply because you just had the discussion. “We didn’t really want you to come along, but since you just threw a fit we’re going to invite you anyway.” You’re sort of screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t in that situation as you either don’t bring up that it’s an issue and keep getting left out for reasons unknown, or you get an invite but feel like it’s a charity invite instead of an honest one.

So in the end it all comes back to communication being the key. If you leave people out because of a rule you’ve never bothered to express, there’s going to be issues. It’s been said thousands of time before, but I’ll say it again – communication is important in every kind of relationship.

We’re staying in the guild, continuing on as normal for the time being. My wife is on a partial break from raiding until we can find out what in the world is causing the game to lag for her at random intervals, and I’m on a partial break as well as I focus on leveling A Death Knight Tank.

5 responses to “Update: I Play to Level, Not to Raid”

Glad you at least know why the crap happened now, not to say I completely agree with their side of things. I’ve never liked not being told what’s going on when it concerns me. If I wait around for something that I’m never brought along to or it doesn’t happen, I’d like to at least know what’s going on so I can decide whether I want to wait or not, or spend my time doing something else.. and so on. Communication is too important.

The couples raid together makes sense… not that most couples need to be together all the time, but that generally they “reserve” certain nights for playing WoW at the same time (whether they’re in the same group or not) and do something else with the remaining nights. I wrote a somewhat wordy post on this if you really want to read boring stuff.

We actually had the reverse happen without an explicit or implicit “couples raid together” policy. Wife signed up, husband did not, so we booked wife, a healer. Then husband signed up after the roster was set. Wife at raid time was trying to get a sub, because apparently, unbeknownst to us, that night of the week was their “in-game date night.” Now I ALWAYS book them together, and if one of them isn’t signed up, I tend to sit the other one out in the rotation just in case. I can’t afford to have a raider (esp a healer!) bail at the last minute because the significant other forgot to sign up and they want to do something together.

I’m not really buying the exclusion based on “miscommunication.” I’m sure it was part of it, but subconsciously, as a raid leader, I gotta admit that it’s hard not to look for excuses (legitimate excuses) to not exclude a pain in the ass.